The Paths We Choose
by Anotherjaneway
Summary: This was a contest piece that tried to explain why Roy DeSoto wasn't wearing a red mountaineer's helmet when he fell in the Sierra/Emergency crossover episode from the 1970s.


This was a contest piece that tried to explain why Roy DeSoto wasn't wearing a red mountaineer's helmet when he fell in the Sierra/Emergency crossover episode from the 1970s.

The Paths We Choose by Anotherjaneway

"Hey Gage!" shouted Ranger Matt Harper as he pulled the blanket more snugly around the tiny injured hiker girl they had found. "Do you and your partner always split up like this in the middle of a rescue?!"  
The roar of the rescue helicopter was deafening and blew pine needles, dust and icy blue aviation exhaust into the one clear spot the rangers and Los Angeles County paramedics had managed to find away from the precarious civilian campsite.

"Not always. But a deal's a deal. Little Cindy here wouldn't load up with us unless Roy went back for those peregrine eggs. I trust him to know what he's doing. I taught him basic survival skills and your Julie Beck and Ted Cassidy have done their darnedest to make sure he knows his way around these parts..." Johnny smiled down on the frightened oxygen masked girl in the stokes. She was shoved in behind the pilot's seat and in front of the passenger jump seats. Harper climbed into the rescue helicopter immediately after Johnny Gage pulled himself inside.

"Let's hope so," Matt Harper said. "From what I can tell, he's not the one who's part Indian in this crazy outfit," he said wryly, tossing an include-us-all gesture between them.

"...Roy'll be back." Johnny said, setting the flight headset over his neck for later use when they got nearer to Rampart Hospital. "A promise is a promise, right sweetie?" Johnny asked the leg splinted girl. She was still trying to hide her tears.

"Yes, Mr. Gage. M- My mom's research project just HAS to keep going. I promised her that I'd find someone to watch after them. It wasn't her fault she tried to stop the eagle that killed the mama falcon and fell doing it. It was an accident," the little girl frowned.

"And you fell trying to find a ranger to come rescue your mother," Gage smiled. "I'm glad you came up using that elk antler as a crutch. That was a very clever idea."

Jack Moore, head ranger for the Sierra Station, looked back from the seat he had next to Ranger P.J. Lewis, his pilot. "I still can't believe I agreed to this nest rescuing thing. Park rangers chase off problem bears...."

"...like Cruncher?" Cindy volunteered brightly.

Jack Moore made a face but rolled his eyes for the immobilized child's benefit as he continued dumping his woes on Gage. "...We don't rear bird of prey chicks for a later introduction back into the wild," he bemoaned.

Johnny leaned over and took another blood pressure on Cindy, who started giggling at her ranger friend's incessant complaining. "Think of it as...furthering your education, Jack. A chance for you and your department to really connect with wildlife in a meaningful way."

"I'll take connecting a water gun against some grizzly butt during Cruncher's garbage dumpster escapades any day than being stuck feeding venison scraps to baby falcons," J.P. shivered.

"Chicken " Cindy teased. "They're still eggs yet."

"That's precisely my point..." Moore bemoaned again. "I'm not a mother hen "

"Well Roy is..." Johnny countered. "That's why he went back to Cindy and her mother's cliff top observatory to see what he can do for the nest. Believe me, he'll do anything to keep a kid happy," he sighed.

Cindy's eyes twinkled and demonstrated that she had noticed the big fire paramedic's inherent weakness, too.

Right then, a down draft from above pushed the cruising helicopter a little closer to the pine tops whizzing by underneath them.

"Whoa boy. Giddy up there, honey," murmured P.J. to his flight bird's control handle in between his gloves. "Don't letta little twilight wind buck you around."

Gage and Harper kept their grip on Cindy's stokes and both hastily buckled their safety belts on, getting pressed in close to where they were tethered to the wall.

"Don't ya trust me?" Lewis said, hearing the snick of buckles in stereo snapping home behind him.

"I trust ya...it's the wind I don't trust," Gage admitted.

"Speak for yourself. It's the wind I'm rooting for, it's the pilot who's got things messed up here," Matt chuckled. "I can almost skim my boot toes on the treetops again." And he dragged his dangling feet back inside the chopper's belly compartment, hugging both feet to his chest protectively.

Lewis whipped his ear phoned head around. "No you can't! My altimeter's showing fifty feet above the canopy's elevation..."

"Made you look " Harper said. "Gotcha That's two for oh, this week, hot shot."

Lewis grumbled and returned back to his flying.

Gage grinned good naturedly at all three forest men with him and immediately felt right at home with the sudden plan to evac the little girl to the city before they swept back to pick up Roy, Julie and Tim later that night.

"I'm sure glad I asked Julie Beck and Tim Cassidy to keep my extra medical gear to meet Roy with halfway back to the clearing when he's done. I'm amazed that we're still light enough weight wise, to fly straight." Johnny quipped.

"Every medic's a critic..." Lewis rejoined instantly. "Now I know why we aren't baby sitting one at the ranger station." But his smile belied his voice's sharp bite.

The wind's buffeting increased, swaying all of them, nauseatingly as the helicopter was made to hold its flight path.

Cindy was bravely quiet.

"Promise we'll survive long enough to come back for the others in one piece," Moore teased his underling hotshot pilot.

"As if I wouldn't..." Lewis guaranteed. "I gotta show this city boy medic the miracle ability that all of us rangers possess. An uncanny innate sense of orientation in the air and our homing instincts."

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Roy DeSoto found the nesting cliff easily by sunset. He could still see the packages of IV solutions and the plastic wrap from the trauma sheeting they had used on Cindy's mother following her extrication from the ledge below the nest. The fall had been a bad one. Bad enough to make the woman's evac by their second, bigger helicopter a priority.

But Roy was convinced the tough as nails woman researcher would live to study yet another peregrine family generation.  
next summer. And so would her daughter.

"But why did I promise to come back for these eggs?" he said, inching forward on his belly until he could see the ropes and pitons the rescue team had left behind, driven into the rock. "I've nothing to carry them up to the top with. My backpack's still on the helicopter Cindy was loaded onto."

DeSoto sat back well away from the edge and pulled out his handy talkie connecting him to the two rangers hiking back with him back to the accident site. "DeSoto to Ranger HT 3. Do you read?"

##Go ahead, Roy.##

"I'm at the cliff top. I'll start heading down to the nest's ledge before you get here, grab them and climb back up. That'll save us a lot of time before night falls. I'll meet you at the same clearing the helicopters lifted off from."

##10-4, our ETA there's twenty minutes.##

Roy tightened the orange helmet around his head and hitched a rope harness from one of the lines left abandoned by the rescue team around his waist and brown corduroys. Then he began the long climb over the edge to the large pine bough overhanging the waterfall where the woman scientist had said the peregrine eggs were nestled in soft down.

He was halfway down the cliff when water spray from the thousands foot high cascade next to him began to mist heavily into his face. "Ahh..." Roy grimaced. "That's cold!" he yelled, rubbing his eyes with his free hand to clear them.

Then the wind picked up as clouds of gray boiled over the ridge sprouting El Capitan and he was bucked against the rock face, despite his firmly tied rope.

Roy clung like a barnacle to the slanted ancient pine tree that sheltered the peregrine nest. Reluctantly, he removed his helmet and lined it with down and pine needles to hold the eggs he had seen deep within the bower. One by one, he deposited the mottled eggs carefully inside of the helmet until his last reach found only empty space and feathers.

He picked handfuls of green pine branches to stuff around to cover the still warm eggs. Then he hooked the helmet's chin strap around his right elbow for the climb back up the sheer rock cliff.

The wind was more than wild at the top, growing stronger despite the waning energy spilling down from the setting sun.

Roy decided to hurry the pace a little, to beat the darkness and the changing weather before he was forced to camp out in the researchers' blind until morning; an idea that he didn't relish.

Cradling the eggs under his warm arm to stave off chill, Roy bounded up the trailhead towards the flare marked clearing the rescue rangers had used for their aircraft the first flight out for mother and child.

But then, a sudden gust of wind swept up a pine bough Roy had packed into the helmet and it slithered free. It scooped a shallowly buried falcon egg up and out of the helmet rapidly and it went tumbling towards the ground.

Without thinking, Roy made a grab for it and shifted his feet, throwing away the walkie talkie in order to make the save.

Unseen, loose shale popped under his heel. It started a mini landslide, cracking all the firm ground from underneath Roy's feet like a rug pulling out from under a swift runner.

It was enough to topple Roy DeSoto over backwards and off balance into a fall back downhill along the trailhead. ::Duck and curl.. You remember football, don't you?:: DeSoto thought to himself. ::Go with the momentum, but stay limp.::

Roy let himself continue rolling, clutching the helmet against his stomach with both arms wrapped around it to spare any of the eggs heavy damage.

::Boy, this was brilliant.:: he said, somersaulting to the shallow ravine at the bottom. ::I'm gonna be black and blue tomorrow morning.:: As he started to think about what Johnny would say, he started to laugh. But then, the back of his head cracked against a flat boulder with enough force to knock him out .

Roy came to rest on his back in a limp heap against a shelf.

The lucky peregrine egg tumbled unharmed out of Roy's rock abraded hand and onto the sandy floor at DeSoto's feet.

Nearby, the walkie talkie sprang to life.. ##Beck to DeSoto. Come in. Do you read? Roy, It's Julie. Do you read me?! Come in !! Why won't you answer?!##

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Johnny Gage couldn't get P.J. Lewis to do his take off list any faster. He even volunteered to be the copilot and read out of the manual for all the proper responses to his check list.

"I'm working as fast as I can, Gage. Now Julie Beck said that the last radio transmission she got from your partner was right around sun down. Gimme some of your sandwich. I'm hungry..." and Lewis snatched the ham and cheese Johnny had gotten from the hospital cafeteria deli line, and immediately stuffed it into his mouth.

"Hey!" Gage said, getting a grip on the unclaimed side of it. "That's MY dinner. Let go!"

P.J. let go with his teeth, but his fingers were clenching the food as tight as ever. "Do you want to whine or fly Mr. Fireman? Cause I'll guarantee that I'm not gonna do much flyin if my blood sugar drops into the basement while we're getting back out there," Lewis said.

Gage gulped. "Is he a diabetic?" he asked lamely, pointing to the back of Lewis' pilot's chair.

Jack Moore nodded the same time Lewis jangled a wrist dressed out with a silver chained military medical tag bracelet.

"Oh, well why didn't you say so?" Johnny said, letting go of the food.

"Didn t know I had to " Lewis chewed noisily, kicking in the main rotor the moment dispatch cleared him for take off. "Everybody hang on to your hats!"

And the ranger helicopter leaped insanely vertical as it twisted a full one hundred eighty degrees back towards the mountains into the storm darkening night sky.

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"Well, why was he hanging onto his hat and not wearing it?" Tim Cassidy, the ranger, wanted to know, as he placed a cervical collar around Roy DeSoto's neck.

Julie Beck grinned. "Take a look inside of it, partner," she said, making sure the unconscious paramedic could breathe all right without an airway under the oxygen mask they had given him. "Make's ya wanna just weep, doesn't it?"

From inside the orange climbing helmet, popped out five glistening baby falcon heads, chirping loudly for all they were worth.

Cassidy shot back onto his butt in mock alarm. "YAhhhahhh..." he shouted from inside a wall of dust.

Julie laughed all the harder. "Oh, knock it off, Tim. You act like you haven't seen baby birds that have hatched out before "

Tim sobered and thoughtfully tucked the helmet with its vulnerable soggy and fluffed passengers into the foot of the stokes they were preparing for Roy for when the helicopter arrived back to the ridge top. "I'm not playing here. There's something kinda gross knowing that those guys were born Caesarian section."

"Caesarian section? Oh, you mean forcibly delivered because they were jolted around when DeSoto fell?" Julie analyzed.

"Yeah yuck..." Tim said, covering the damp peeping things up with the stokes tarp to preserve their body heat.

Julie shook her head, clucking chiding noises softly. "You'll never make it as one of our new paramedic trainees if you carry on at this rate. You're so squeamish, Tim."

Tim Cassidy bristled mildly, which was strong for him. "Gage's not here and DeSoto's out to lunch. I don't think I'll have to worry about what the others might think of me for at least twenty minutes more." Then he blinked, calm as ever. "Want me to take another blood pressure?"

"Be my guest," Julie sighed. "It's the same as it was when we first got here. I'll check him out for limb fractures."

Tim Cassidy hunkered down inside his jacket, sheltered from the force of the wind in between his uniformed knees. There he got his reading. "100 over 86," he announced loudly to be heard.

"The same. He's very stable, thank goodness," Beck replied, leaning back and brushing sand off of her dirty knees. " I found no breaks. Not even along his c-spine."

"Let's immobilize him anyway," Tim said quickly before Beck moved even a single leg.

"Of course. Not like we have an X-ray machine around here any place close," Julie said, her tone very light to make her nervous partner feel more at ease at rescuing the man who was supposed to be his teacher.

Then she lifted her HT radio once again. "Gage, he checks out. Do we have permission to start that I.V. yet?"

##Affirmative Brackett says yes. Make it Ringer's in his right arm, wide open. If you can't get a vein, I'll do it when I get down there. Though I don't think you'll have any problems Roy's got real nice veins. Even Tim'll be able to do it. Our landing ETA is six minutes, Julie Keep me posted on any new changes. I'll hang up in communications range until you're through. ##

Julie Beck heard Johnny's laughing tone even over the howling wind. "My he's chipper. I wonder how he gets under pressure "

Tim sighed, hunkering down in between his knees again with an unsheathed needle catheter poised over the bend in Roy's elbow. "Shush woman. I'm trying to concentrate here."

Right then the covered hungry falcon chicks in the stokes basket, chirped even louder when a lightning bolt jagged across the sky.

"Why don't you tell them that?" she shrugged in amusement.

Tim tilted his ranger hat down so he couldn't see Julie at all and got down to business. A bright red flash back of blood rewarded him a minute later and soon, he had taped down the I.V. line. Cassidy spiked the bag with the tube's other end and left the Ringers bag hanging between his teeth as he adjusted its flow to full open.

Next to him, Roy groaned. But he didn't move at all, still mostly out.

Julie bent close over him to be heard over the roaring wind. "Roy? Can you hear me? It's okay, you've hit your head but we're taking really good care of you. Johnny's hovering up above us," she shouted. "Breathe a little deeper, ok? I got ya on some O2. It may clear your head a little bit faster."

DeSoto bubbled when he tried to talk and Julie wiped away some superficial blood with her hand. "Ughh... did th---*cough* " Roy whispered.

"Did what?" Beck asked. "Easy now. Spit out that blood first, you've cut your lip."

Roy grimaced and opened groggy eyes. But the second time, he annunciated clearly. "Did...they.... make ...it?"

"Cindy and her mother? Or the eggs?" Tim asked in an assessment test.

Roy smiled, feeling the oxygen mask with his un-IV boarded hand. "B-Both..."

"Doing fine. Brackett's got Mama in surgery right now. We also got ourselves five brand new newborns and whoo wheee, are they lively! Slimy, but lively..." Tim beamed.

"T- They always are..." Roy whispered. Then he closed his eyes and the smile waned a bit into the flatness of unconsciousness as his face sagged into another blackout.

"Roy? You still with me?" Cassidy said, gripping Roy's carotid in a quality check. "He's out again," Tim said, looking up from where Julie was preparing the lift lines on the stokes.

"But he s...HAPPY...and out. There's a difference," she joked.

"You know, I just may have been wrong about you. That was a sweet piece of reassurance you just crammed into those few seconds. And Gage heard every word," Beck said, hefting a live talkie up into the air.

Its red talk light was on.

"Julie Beck! For crying out loud. I'm gonna kill ya!" Tim Cassidy protested.

##Not unless you bring her back afterwards. Nice job on the I.V. stick, Tim. Julie says you got a vein first attempt. Hang tight. Lewis's bringing us in. Why don't cha get me another set of vitals while you're waiting?##

Tim snatched the HT from Julie's hands with an indignant smirk and he fiddled with all the buttons until he knew it was off. "We're not in class here Beck!" he giggled nervously. "You know how I feel about Gage looking over my shoulder."

"Not exactly class time now, yeah, I know. More like training in the field, but it's still Gage's rightful territory. And mine, to evaluate YOU... while you're doing it."

Tim frowned. "Let's get DeSoto ready to move, before I decide to stick you, too, for tricking me."

"Make mine a Heineken I.V. Please," Julie Beck said as she waggled her eyebrows under her ranger's hat.

Tim got off his knees, suddenly more confident than he had been just a minute ago and he instantly found it impossible to stay mad at her.

Seconds later, a warm shaft of white light sliced down from the night sky above as a basket hitch cable was lowered inch by inch from Johnny Gage's helicopter.

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End file.
